Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina said on Friday it
was "stunning" that the Justice Department had reportedly
provided immunity to a computer technician who wiped Hillary
Clinton's private email server despite orders from Congress to
preserve its files.

"This is prosecutor 101. You don't give immunity to the person
who actually robbed the bank," Gowdy said on Fox News.

He continued: "You may want to give it to the getaway driver. You
may want to give it to the person who helped count the money
afterwards, but you don't give immunity to the person who walked
in and robbed the bank. That's not that complicated, but that's
apparently what the FBI did."

On Thursday night, The New York Times reported that the Justice
Department had given immunity to Paul Combetta. The technician
previously conceded to authorities that he deleted Clinton's
files while "aware of the existence of the preservation request
and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email
data," according to the report.

"They gave immunity to the very person you would most want to
prosecute, which is the person who destroyed official public
records after there was a subpoena and after there was a
prosecution order," Gowdy said.

Gowdy said the FBI "guessed wrong" and "blew it" by giving
Combetta immunity.

"They got it wrong," he said. "They blew it. They gave immunity
to the trigger man. That's why those of us that used to do it for
a living didn't like to give immunity."

The former House Benghazi committee chairman added: "You better
be right on who the trigger person is. You better be right on who
the culprit is if you're going to give transactional immunity. If
that's what they did, then they immunized the one person you
would must want to prosecute for the destruction of government
records. It is frankly stunning."

Brian Fallon, a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign, told The
Times that Combetta's actions had already been "thoroughly
examined" by authorities.

House Republicans
announced Tuesday that they had requested an investigation
into whether Clinton and her team illegally destroyed evidence
during the FBI's investigation into her use of a private email
server while she was secretary of state.